Labour MPs opposed to assisted dying have called the bill “irredeemably flawed and not fit to become law” in a letter to their parliamentary colleagues, saying “significant new risks” emerged during the scrutiny process.
The letter from six critics, circulated to all Labour MPs, including two select committee chairs, came as the scrutiny committee finalised changes to the bill, which will now return to the Commons in April for its final stages.
Major changes have been made to the bill since it was last voted on by MPs – the signoff by a high court judge has been removed and replaced by a panel of experts, including a psychiatrist and a social worker.
On Tuesday night, in changes that angered some of the bill’s proponents, the bill’s sponsor, Kim Leadbeater, changed the implementation period from two to four years – meaning that should the bill pass, no assisted deaths are likely to take place before 2029.
In the letter from MPs including select committee chairs Meg Hillier and Florence Eshalomi as well as Antonia Bance, Jess Asato, James Frith and Melanie Ward, the MPs said that the promise the bill would be strengthened in committee “had not been kept”.
The bill was finalised after midnight on Tuesday night after a marathon sitting when MPs examined hundreds of amendments. The MPs on the bill who do not support assisted dying have frequently claimed that their suggestions to make the bill safer were outvoted.
Announcing the end of the committee process, Leadbeater said it had made “already the strongest assisted dying legislation anywhere in the world even safer and more robust”, citing changes made including mandatory training for doctors and panel members to detect coercion and a guarantee that anybody considering an assisted death would be made fully aware of all end-of-life care options.
But the bill’s critics, in their letter to MPs, said there was “reckless and loose language in the bill” that undermined the founding principles of the NHS. They said there were insufficient protections for children, people with anorexia, people with mental health conditions, those with learning difficulties or victims of domestic and financial abuse.
They also criticised ministers involved in the process for giving no impact assessments or indications of the costs of the service and no guarantee of improvements to palliative care to ensure a real choice.
Among the other concerns raised by MPs was the prospect that doctors would still be allowed to proactively suggest assisted dying to patients who had not raised it themselves and the potential for the private sector to make a profit from the legislation.
“Our efforts have not succeeded in improving the bill and we cannot recommend a vote in favour of it,” the MPs said. “It is our hope that the bill will not progress in its current form, and that a better way can be found to take forward the vital conversation about choice at the end of life.
“But a flawed and dangerous bill that places the most vulnerable people in society at unacceptable risk is no choice at all, and we urge MPs to vote against it.”
Leadbeater said in her statement that the “status quo is failing dying people and their families”. She said there was “particular care to protect the disabled and the vulnerable and to ensure that only those with a genuine, settled and informed wish to be assisted to die in the manner of their choosing are able to do so”.
She said she hoped that there would be confidence in her plan for a multi-disciplinary panel to replace high court judges. “We are not removing judges from this process. Rather, we are adding the expertise and experience of psychiatrists and social workers to provide extra protections in the areas of assessing mental capacity and detecting coercion while retaining judicial oversight,” she said.
